


The Restoration of the Hatstand

by TheRimmerConnection



Series: The Hatstand Trilogy [3]
Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes (1984 TV)
Genre: Careful removal of guilt, Established Relationship, M/M, Moustache Play, Sequel, Subterfuge on the part of secondary characters
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-02-18
Updated: 2014-02-18
Packaged: 2018-01-12 23:14:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1204132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheRimmerConnection/pseuds/TheRimmerConnection
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Third instalment in the Hatstand Trilogy, and hopefully rather more cheerful than the second. </p><p>With his wife dead, Watson returns to Holmes, necessitating an appropriate reunion, and a careful consideration of what happens next.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Restoration of the Hatstand

On the day my wife died, and I made the terrible discovery that the main emotion summoned up inside me by this dreadful event was relief; I found myself back in 221b Baker Street, being cared for by Holmes, and knowing that this was exactly where I wanted to be.  
  
He had dealt with the police for me, allowing me only to confirm the statements given by others. Then he had brought me home, given me brandy, and Mrs Hudson's hot, sweet tea, fended off those friends who came to offer consolations, and told me of his own guilt in the matter of my marriage. He had forced me into it. Or at least, he had persuaded me that it was a good thing to do, knowing full well that it was not, but that I trusted him enough to follow his advice. It never occurred to me for a second that I might not forgive him, and we sank to the floor, sitting before the fire, Holmes behind me, warming my back, while I tried to make sense of the day.  
  
That I should be grieving at this moment was unquestionable. Caroline, my wife, had been a wonderful woman. She had loved me, taken care of me and been excellent company. She had also loved Holmes in a way, certainly found him fascinating and attractive. That had only endeared her to me further. Bedding her had been sweet and pleasurable. She deserved to be mourned by her widower, if only as a friend. However, as I gazed into the fire, I knew that her one major fault had turned my deepest feelings so far against her that although I felt no negative emotions towards her, yet I could not summon up the least real regret that she was dead. This fault was not that she had separated me from Holmes – she had tried, indeed, to send me back to him, to share me with him that our marriage might be saved – that I had refused was a reflection of my feeling of moral duty rather than a reflection of my heart's desire. No. Her real fault had simply been that she was not Holmes, and my whole being desired that he be mine, my only love.  
  
I was a man of two minds at that moment. One part of me recognised that there should be grief, that I was behaving abysmally. The other part rejoiced at my freedom to return to him. The two were irreconcilable, yet I must needs reconcile them if I were to attempt to live a normal life, or as normal as life can be in the company of Sherlock Holmes.  
  
I scrambled out of his lap, attempted, shakily to rise, then collapsed back to sit on the floor and pulled him towards me, needing now to hold him in return, to reclaim him as mine, unwilling to be pleasant and wait. He appeared startled, but put up no resistance, only slid his arms around my back as he knelt upright in front of me. I could feel his fingers settling between my ribs, my vertebrae. My muscles twitched under his hands, and I leaned forward, a sudden pang of need making me momentarily vicious, and I wrenched his shirt tails from the waistband of his trousers, driving my hands up under his clothes, my nails digging into his shallow flesh, bumping and scraping across his bones, sitting so close to the surface of his solid, but thinly covered back.  
  
He gasped and twisted in my arms, pushing his back into my hands. I had almost forgotten the rawness of this passion, the danger, and yet, where I would usually have surrendered to it in all seriousness, now I could not stop grinning. I pressed my lips to his naked stomach, bared my teeth and bit him, softly at first, then harder, until he gasped, 'Watson!' and dragged me up again by the head.  
  
'You are grinning like a fool, Watson. It is most unseemly.'  
  
I nodded, 'Holmes, whatever will I do in public?'  
  
'You must act, my dear fellow. That is all. But you were fond of her, you must surely be able to summon up some grief?' He held me away from him for a second, and I considered the matter. Yes, I must have grief for her lurking somewhere, just so buried under these more pressing emotions that I could not yet find it. That other part of my brain pushed its way to the fore, and my smile died, not through sadness, but through alarm at my own callousness. I pushed back from him, seeing his lips and chest moving more visibly with the increasing rapidity of his breathing.  
  
'Holmes, I cannot do this now,' I said, my voice cracking with the strain of stopping myself, of holding myself back from simply taking him, whether it were wanted or not. 'My wife is not yet buried, I should not, it is wrong. Terribly wrong.'  
  
He nodded in perfect understanding, though his hands upon the back of my head gripped tightly and when he pressed his forehead to mine I could feel the thin tension of muscle running up from his clenched jaw.  
  
'Naturally,' he said, and his voice was a study in calm normalcy. He rose, his legs seeming to extend forever from my low vantage point, and held out a hand to help me up.  
  
'Tomorrow, my dear Watson, we shall make arrangements for the funeral. If my assistance would be of any value to you?'  
  
'I would consider it the greatest service if you would help me in this, my friend,' I replied. The very idea of facing any of these duties alone, or without him was intolerable. With him at my side, no matter how inappropriate if one knew the facts of the situation, the process would be easier, I had no doubt.

* * *

  
The funeral arrangements were, indeed, easily made with Holmes at my side. He seemed to take the burden from me without my even noticing it, until, later in the day, I had the chance to sit and review the morning's work and realise his contributions. At every question of what, when, how and who, he tested the question in his own mind, deduced my answer, presented it to me as a possibility, and left me only the requirement to say yes or no. I found that on all but one point, my answer was in the affirmative.  
  
That singular point was regarding whether or not I should be a coffin bearer. It had already been decided that a simple funeral would be best, and although I balked at placing the mortal remains of my wife in a carriage, when it was such a conveyance which had spelt her end, it was necessary, as a matter of practicality. The journey to and from the hearse at either end, however, required the shoulders of men, and I should have done it. Holmes knew it, and sought to convince me, but I resisted with good reason.  
  
Were I to bear the coffin, the undertakers would find men to match my stature and keep the coffin level. That would exclude Holmes, even were he to volunteer, for his shoulder rises several inches above mine. Therefore, he would not be beside me as we left the church, would be obliged to stand respectfully with the other mourners, and follow behind at a distance. I could not bear that. I wanted, no, needed him beside me every second of that day. Not to save me from my grief, but to prevent me from quite losing my mind at the impropriety of my thoughts.  
  
It was Holmes who, under my distracted supervision, shuffled through the papers Caroline had amassed in her little escritoire. He who, finding a small book of addresses therein, presented it to Mrs Hudson and prevailed upon her to go through it and send black borders to a number of those whose names I recognised as distant family or close friends. He it was, also, who placed a notice in the newspapers, so as to reach those acquaintances of hers of whom I had no knowledge.  
  
We had settled that the funeral should be conducted the following Wednesday, and in the days between, Holmes barely left me alone for a minute. When he did leave my company, it was always with a squeeze of the shoulder, a hand upon my arm. At night, he returned to his post in the chair near my bed. We did not share a bed during that time, but I woke up twice to find him standing by the bed, his slender fingertips resting on the back of my hand as it lay upon the pillow, and once, I was roused by something I could not quite remember, but the scent of Holmes was thick in the air, and there was a lingering sensation upon my forehead, as if warm lips had pressed there for a moment.  
  
I wanted him dreadfully. I could not possibly have given myself to him during that period, but that did not lessen the aching want in my chest whenever I looked at him. For his part, the touches were all he gave me, knowing my views on the matter. His concern for me was obvious, but I felt that he was content to leave me be. His needs have never been as strong as mine in that direction, and his ability to close his mind to those thoughts which have no current place in it must have allowed him to ignore or completely divest himself of any requirement to take me to himself once more.

* * *

  
The day of the funeral was fine and the service was mercifully brief. Throughout it all, Holmes stood and sat beside me. At last, as the coffin left the chapel, he pressed close to me, side by side, as we turned to watch it leave, and between the folds of our black overcoats, he took my hand and squeezed it gently, rubbing his thumb across the back of my hand in time with the slow steps of the bearers.  
  
At the cemetery too, he stood by my side, his face impassive under his black homburg, eyes looking firmly ahead, but his arm through mine, doing the office of a good friend for the world, staying by me as my dearest companion.  
  
Afterwards, I thanked the priest and returned to Holmes, who nodded, his face twitching in satisfaction at the completion of something unpleasant, and we took a cab back to Baker Street. Mrs Hudson had already returned, dropped by the private carriage of a mutual friend a little earlier. By the time we had shut the street door behind us and were climbing the stairs, with Mrs Hudson muttering something about tea and cake, I was positively desperate to share some little intimacy with Holmes again. I had forgone a proper wake. I knew it would cause people to talk, but there was nothing to be done. I simply could not force myself to stand amongst all those people in their genuine grief and concern for me, and lie endlessly about the state of my own heart. Now I was even more thankful, for I do not think I could have borne another hour or two before we were alone.  
  
It was almost more than my nerves could take, to calmly remove my coat and hat and watch Holmes do the same. To search for my slippers and unlace my boots. Then to wait as Mrs Hudson placed the tea tray on the table and explained the cakes to us. To stand in feigned solemnity while she laid a hand upon my arm and kissed me on the cheek with soft, lavender-scented lips.  
  
She left, and I turned to Holmes, but before I could so much as take a step towards him, he had crossed the room in three great strides, and he wrapped his arms around me and squeezed. His mouth landed upon the top of my head, scattering kisses through my hair, then down onto my temple. His teeth grazed across my brow, his nose nuzzled the corner of my eye as he bit lightly at my cheekbone, and as his hands gripped tighter and tighter, he pressed his own firm lips to mine and as he breathed hard to feed his frenzy, he pushed my lips apart, sliding his tongue between with impudent force, requiring my co-operation. So unlike his everyday demeanour was it, that I had forgotten how passionate he could be in the heat of his ardour. I had forgotten that the Holmes who played his violin with such ferocity at times, the Holmes who would leap and run in pursuit of a suspect, or an ideal, was the same Holmes who had made love to me and held me so ferociously that I had carried the bruises for a week. When he and I shared a bed, the calm front of cool logic and gentlemanly behaviour was shattered and set aside, and all that remained was the lover of the arts, the Baritsu master, the mad glint of true genius. This Holmes, my own, secret Holmes, was made of parts of the public Holmes, I knew, but felt rawer. He was made of grasping fingers and sharpened joints; of sinew and muscle designed purely for holding me still. Even now, with his frame a little padded out by age, he seemed a slender thing, full of tension, as I held him in return.  
  
I realised that my own hunger was nothing compared to his. He had been desperate, for all these days he had stood by my side, seemingly impassive, strong as iron. Something, almost uncontainable, had been simmering there, beneath his pale skin, and either I had been too distracted myself to notice the symptoms – a thing I very much doubted, given my close knowledge of the smallest details of Holmes' demeanour – or he had given no sign whatsoever. His self-control is not unknown to me, but his actions now suggested that this had been a super-human effort of will.  
  
In one last great blast of consideration, he pushed away from me a little and looked me in the eyes, searching me for truth.  
  
'Watson,' he breathed, 'Are you willing now, to...'  
  
'Yes, damn you!' I said, surprising myself. I had not realised how greatly on edge I was. Morally, for my own self-esteem, I had been obliged to wait until my wife was safely buried. One could simply not take up with one's lover, no matter how eagerly awaited, while one's spouse lay in the parlour, so to speak. It was simply impossible to countenance. In truth, a delay of at least a few months was called for, for propriety's sake, but since we were not about to announce our dealings with each other to anybody, the wait seemed unnecessary, and my body was certainly not in any position to refuse him, already the ache in my groin was rising to an uncomfortable level, but more than that, my desire to touch him was overwhelming. I felt as though melting into him, crawling inside his skin, melding my body with his until a sheet of paper could not have been slid between us, would still not be enough. Nothing could possibly make up for time wasted, for all those nights I had lain with my wife and not with him; all those times I had pressed my lips to Caroline's, and not to his. I had not felt so strongly since I was a young medical student, permanently yearning for the company of one of the young ladies one could find in the bars near the hospital, while I sat up late into the night, trying to cram the textbooks into my exhausted brain by the light of a cheap and guttering candle.  
  
'Come with me then,' he said, taking my hand and leading me past the two hall doors, so that he could lock them, then on into his bedroom.  
  
The room appeared to have been hit by a typhoon. He had clearly experienced some difficulty in finding some item of apparel for the funeral earlier that day, and the entire contents of his wardrobe appeared to have made their way out of their place and were draped about the other furniture. His dark grey suit hung from the window, the tweeds over his cheval mirror. A pair of stockings had been flung at his wash-stand, landing with their toes in the water in his basin and were now soaking wet. A pile of shirts stood upon his dressing chair, but so precarious was the stacking that as we entered the room, they tumbled to the floor. The bed was covered in a scattering of trousers and shoes, and was certainly not in a condition to be rolled about upon.  
  
Holmes took one look around, sniffed and let go of my hand. He looked at me, made a little movement as if to lean in to kiss me, stopped, looked again at the impenetrable mess, blinked hard, swore under his breath, threw his hands into the air and whirled away from me, muttering,  
  
'This will not do, I am sorry, a moment my...' I joined him as he started to seize armfuls of clothing and jam them back, haphazardly into the wardrobe. A part of me rebelled at the lack of order we were creating, and no doubt he would mourn it at some point, when he needed a fresh and uncreased shirt, for example, but now the object was to clear a space for us at once.  
  
In a minute or two the job was done, and as he shut the wardrobe door on a final bow tie, I fell upon him and pressed him hard against its wooden panelling. His hands fell on my shoulders and I was reminded inescapably of the first time we had embraced like this, simply attempting to teach him the way to hold a lover. For a moment I wished I could go and get the hatstand, to make the moment complete, but neither he, nor I, would be willing to let go of each other for a great enough length of time to make that possible.  
  
I was aware that he still experienced some feelings of guilt regarding his actions in pushing me into marriage. Although I accepted a certain degree of culpability on his part, I was not willing to allow him to brood upon it. I after all, had forgiven him entirely. I had already voiced my forgiveness, but I was certain that, even for someone with the great intellect of my dear friend, a physical display of affection would be the surest way to prove the truth of my words.  
  
He attempted to push me back towards the bed, but I held him firmly, determined to direct our actions myself for the time being. Feeling the feverish urgency rising inside me once more, I deliberately slowed my movements, undoing his tie with agonising slowness. He had raised his hands in accommodating surrender when I had stopped him, and now he dropped them upon my shoulders, fingers tapping out some silent tune or other.  
  
As I fiddled his front collar stud undone, he closed his eyes and tilted his head back slightly, giving me more room to work, and I soon had it open, continuing down the rest of his buttons, shaking back the fabric easily, sliding his braces off his shoulders, dragging his shirt tails free. I placed my hands flat upon his chest, pushing, feeling it rising and falling, noticeably faster the longer I stayed there, his heart beating strongly beneath. I lowered my head, resting my ear against that vigourous breast for a minute, listening to his life pounding on. Then, moving, I softly brushed my cheek across one hard nipple, letting it run between my lips, compressing them around it for a second. He took a single, deep breath, and his back arched away from the wardrobe.  
  
'Watson!' he exclaimed in a whisper, and I smiled, trying the same upon the other nipple. The effect was entirely satisfactory, and I continued, letting my moustache brush lightly across those two solid points of flesh, making him shudder at the ticklish touch. Then, while my fingers stayed behind, replicating the touch with knuckles and nails, I moved my head back to his throat, burying my nose in the dip below his jaw. Here his pulse, his scent, his warmth, combined in an intoxicating mixture and I nearly lost my resolve to move slowly.  
  
To aid in my restraint, I pulled back, bringing him with me, and pressed the backs of his legs against the bed until his knees bent and he sat. I considered this a triumph of reserve, not having thrown him down and leapt atop him, so I allowed myself a moment's gentle kiss upon his lips. He chased my lips as I pulled back, but I tutted and he stopped, a gentle smirk playing around his mouth as his eyes opened and flashed desire at me. I held my breath and looked down instead, squatting at his feet to undo his bootlaces.  
  
I pulled his right boot from his foot, ran my hands up inside his trouser leg to find the top of his stocking, and rolled it down, blowing lightly across the top of his foot as it was revealed. Repeating the process with his left leg, I leant my forehead against his knees for a moment to recover myself once more. Without looking up, which I knew would be my undoing, I reached up, loosed his trousers, and with a little assistance from him, stripped him to his underclothes.  
  
A single glance up at his reddened face told me that I could not afford to look if I were to continue successfully in this manner. Instead, I slid my hands over his skin, from his ankles, up both calves to his knees, where I slid them over and inwards, moving firmly over the inside of his thighs, enjoying the cut-off gasp as I turned at the last moment to avoid his groin.  
  
I got to my knees and laid my head at the very top of his left thigh and rested there, breathing against the curve of slowly hardening flesh now concealed beneath a single layer of fabric.  
  
'Watson, you will be the death of me,' he muttered, but his voice was breathy, rough with lust, and when he brought one hand to rest on the side of my head, fingers ruffling my hair, I did not bother to stop him. My own hands had passed around his waist until they met at the base of his spine, the tips of my middle fingers resting in the cleft of his buttocks. I moved them slowly and minutely, tiny circles of pressure that made his breath catch at every movement. I raised my head a little to brush against his stomach, and he suddenly let himself fall backwards, trapping my hands under him, his own still playing delicately through my hair.  
  
Running my chin over the smooth flesh of his belly, I felt, rather than heard his slight reaction to the pricking of my late-afternoon bristles. I pressed forward until my moustache prodded him, replacing the itchiness of barely-visible hairs with its shaving-brush firmness. There was a faint sound from above me, and I raised my eyes to the oblique view of Holmes' face afforded by this position. His lips were parted, his eyes closed. As I rubbed my moustache across his skin, he took a deep breath and his features tensed, then relaxed. I considered for a second, pulled away, pressed back in, dragged the bristles on my top lip across the other side of his belly. There it was again. I could not restrain a small smile, and as it appeared on my lips, his hands clenched a little in my hair as the moustache rubbed across him again. I let it run then, alternating these hirsute touches with soothing kisses.  
  
The reaction was most gratifying. The grip against my scalp increased painfully, then released as he threw his hands up to cover his own face. I knelt up, tall upon my knees, pulled my hands free, reached up and took his hands in mine, pulling myself further up his body. He refused to remove them from his face, but held on to my hands, nonetheless. From my new, elevated position, I could reach his nipples, suddenly recalling how they had affected him at my touch up against the wardrobe. At that recollection, I raised my head, chose to ignore them for a while, decided upon a path along a prominent rib, from just below his left arm to the centre of his chest, where it dipped away to his sternum, and brushed it with a single rough stroke. His hands clamped upon mine and a slight whimper escaped him. I tickled at his sternum, running my nose ahead of the desired touch, up the valley of bone, pressing harder where the flesh was deeper, a lighter touch where bone hid under thin skin.  
  
I stopped at his clavicles, dropped a little of my weight upon him, rested my chin and set my moustache in his suprasternal notch, pressing gently, rocking my head a little to provide sensation. Holmes pulled my hands against his cheeks, I heard another gasped breath and raised my head again.  
  
His eyes flicked open, appearing so dark under his lowering lids as to be unnatural. He held my gaze, the stare a challenge, a dare to hold him under this torture, to keep a grip on my own control. I let out the breath I had been holding, touched my moustache to his chin, ran it up to his lower lip, his eyes closed again, and I felt a surge of pride, mingling with the relief of knowing his trust in me. That I could so disrupt this astonishing man, and that he would permit that disruption without question... That was a great boost to my self-esteem. I moved to his shoulder, resting my forehead against my own forearm, aware of the heat rising through the fabric of my shirt. Now I could feel a twitching beneath my lips, a gentle shiver, an occasional shudder as I smoothed my way back and forth across his skin, washing from side to side as I descended, traversing his pectoral muscles, returning, at last, to nipples that stood out iron-hard from his chest.  
  
I buried the left in the bushiest part of my moustache, letting it slip between the hairs, caressing it on every side. He whimpered: a pathetic, lovely sound; and pressed my palm flat against his face, bringing it to his mouth, digging his teeth into the base of my thumb, only restraining himself enough to avoid drawing blood. I was thankful, it helped me to ignore the aching want in my own body. I remained there, moving only slightly, a little flicker of pleasure from Holmes every time I did so assuring me that this was worth the effort of will.  
  
After a while, the flickers of pleasure turned to shudders of desperation, and I took pity and swapped sides, engulfing his right nipple in what I had hitherto considered to be simply a distinguished ornament to my face. The left was ringed with a deeper pink than usual, irritated by the stimulation. I stole back the hand upon which Holmes was not currently gnawing, and laid it upon his left breast, feeling the hot, blunt stab in the centre of my palm. In time, less than before, Holmes was ready to bat me away from this too. I stopped before he could make the motion, his teeth ceasing their relentless incursion into my flesh at the same moment. I took my hand from him before he could use it again, and slid my hands down over his shoulders, into the hollows of his armpits, threading my fingers through thick, curling hair; damp with perspiration, but soft as lambswool.  
  
I tugged gently, sank back towards the floor, pushed his waistband down and out of the way with my chin so that I could press my nose into his navel, pressing kisses below which only served to tease him with the intervening hairs. His arms clamped down upon my hands and his pelvis jerked suddenly upwards, catching me unawares, and making me dig deeply into the unguarded softness of his lower belly, while the solidity of his erection jabbed me pointedly in the chest through his underwear. I tutted and swung myself to the side, not intending to touch him in that way at all: there was no need. The sounds emanating from his mouth were now harsh and increasingly filthy. I almost chuckled to myself as the drift of my facial hair along his ribs caused him to let fly with a particularly un-Holmes-like expletive. I allowed myself a gentle breath, inhaling his scent, then blowing it out in a cool stream over his skin.  
  
'Wa...' was all he could manage by way of a sentence. His left hand waved wildly through the air as he brought it away from his face, searching blindly for my head. He found it, and rang long fingers down my cheek, sliding to my chin, gripping it between his thumb and the tips of three fingers. I tilted my head, he pushed fingers up into my moustache, ruffling it the wrong way. My sensitised skin received the pressure against my follicles and translated it into ticklish bursts of uncertain pleasure, which transformed into pure, arousing sensation as it hit the returning wave of my lust.  
  
Holmes knew it, naturally, and sought to continue, but I pulled away, not wishing my own desires to get in the way of my determined assault upon his person. I got to my feet slightly painfully, awkwardly too, with no hands to assist me, and traced my upper lip along the side of his arm, across his neck, down the other arm, back up and then down the centre of his chest. This time there was no reaction, and I looked up. He appeared relaxed, though from this angle it was very difficult to see the varying tensions of his muscles. His eyes were closed, his mouth drawn in the faintest of smiles, and his breathing seemed regular and slow.  
  
'Holmes? Have you fallen asleep?' I asked, not sure whether to feel hurt. He opened one lazy eye, reached up a hand and squeezed my shoulder.  
  
'Of course not, dear fellow,' he said, though it sounded to be a terrible effort to get the words out. 'I am merely immersing myself in your expert attentions and...I must admit, making a great effort to restrain myself, as this is so clearly something you wish to do entirely by yourself. It is a great honour...' This last word was cut off by a shudder as I absently twisted the hands trapped under his arms. I had no wish for his brain to be functioning at such a level as to be able to form coherent sentences such as this, so I repeated the movement of my hands, watched him convulse below me, and pulled them free  
  
'Hmm,' I replied, as well as I could with my heart pounding and my breathing heavy in my throat, 'Well then be quiet.' He smiled, as I had been the one to ask the question, and squeezed my shoulder again, pressing up towards me for a moment until I tutted and pushed him back down. I returned my  moustache to his nipples, this having been the action which clearly did the most damage to Holmes' composure, and his nails dug into my shoulder, while his other hand grasped at the bedsheets and twisted them, his controlled calm vanishing in seconds.  
  
I felt his leg rising next to me, his knee bending, rubbing up my side, and his foot twisted suddenly around my leg, trapping me with astonishing strength. I increased my pressure, now brushing roughly at his reddened, over-sensitive breast. The calm composure of a minute ago was nowhere in evidence now, and I suspected that he had applied some meditative trick, which I had now broken irreparably. The rate of his breathing was increasing by the second, and the flush rising up his chest had very little to do with the irritation of my bristles.  
  
His grip on my shoulder was so strong that a part of me recognised that I should be in agony. I, however, was unable to feel a jot of pain now, and I ignored the hand, and the leg that was pulling on my old wound, and simply concentrated on my lips, his breast, his panting breaths, his throttled, involuntary cries.  
  
He was writhing on the bed, a series of guttural noises spilling from his mouth, and as I rested my teeth hard against his skin, and engulfed his right nipple in rough hairs for a final time, I let my weight fall, drew up my knee and pressed it firmly against his groin.  
  
I have never known a sound such as Holmes released then. It seemed as if it were dragged from his very soul. The leg wrapped about my own was released as it straightened in a single spasm, and the hand on my shoulder slid across, wrapping his arm across my whole body and pulling me against him so tightly that I could barely breathe. I felt him pulsing against my knee, his climax crested, and I lay there, close-pressed upon him, aware of the throbbing in my groin, the lack of clarity in my thoughts; vaguely noticing the ache in my shoulder and leg, the soreness of my lips where I had rubbed them against him.  
  
I dropped my hand to the solidity of my erection, pressed it through my trousers, wondered whether it was worth letting go to wriggle out of them. It seemed to be: my body wanted to feel skin upon skin. I was still almost entirely clothed, and Holmes was now lying immobile beneath me. I wriggled up, kissed his mouth and attempted to wrestle free. He held me more tightly, but slipped his own arm down to the front of my trousers, wrenched and tugged with shaking fingers until he had loosened them enough to slip his hand inside.  
  
The touch of his hand upon my member was electrifying, even in such confinement. He barely had room to move, but the simple press of his fingers, combined with the chafing fabric was perfectly sufficient. In less than a minute I was thrusting against him. In another, I had lost all self-awareness, and when I climaxed, soaking the inside of my trousers, my weight fell entirely upon him, and he dragged his hand free, resting it instead on my cotton shirtsleeve. I kissed his lips lazily, and waited for my body to return to some state of normality.  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Comments are deeply, deeply appreciated :)


End file.
